H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (15 page)

Or come across like…a million snakes.

That thought alone sent me scurrying through
the forest, running as fast as I could run. My adrenaline was on
high. I had never run so hard in my life. I was hopping over bushes
and, yes, over snakes. I could feel them underneath me but, I
refused to stop. I ran as hard and as fast as I could move. I had
no idea how long I was going to have to do this.

It was nearly thirty minutes later when I
looked up at the sky. Shit. I had totally lost track of my
direction. I was now facing the North Star. Which meant I had been
running in circles. I was exhausted, and my side hurt. Nearby was a
giant rock. So I jumped on top of it. The rattling of the snakes
echoed everywhere. I looked around me, and the ground seemed to be
moving. Snakes, everywhere. Slithering, inevitably approaching me.
My skin crawled. How Atticai had done this, I don’t know, but the
man—or vampire—was surely dealing with some dark magic.

There was no way that I was going to make it
around them. I was going to have to attack them.

I jumped down and started swinging the
branch. I swung it like a crazed, steroid-induced baseball player.
I tried to make room, so I could get around, but there were just
too many of them. Snakes flew in every direction. I severed some in
half; I bashed others. But there were just too many. I was tiring
and losing hope, certain I was going to be smothered by thousands
of rattlesnakes, when suddenly I heard a squawk. A familiar
shrieking squawk. It sounded like Daphne: kee-eeeee-arr,
kee-eeeee-arr.

This night was getting weirder and
weirder.

She flew in like a missile, wings folded
close to her body. It was dark, and I couldn’t see what the hawk
was doing, but it was something. She flew in low circles, and the
snakes began to scatter. I jumped back onto the boulder, and just
stood there and watched Daphne in action. The undulating forest
floor, once alive with snakes, now calmed. The rattling disappeared
into the distance. In a matter of minutes, the snakes were gone,
beaten back by the angry hawk with a shrill voice and no fear of
them. Incredible.

All the snakes had gone away. Or so I
thought. As I jumped down from the rock and moved through the high
grass, I heard a sharp rattle, and then a biting pain. Turns out
the little shits can bite through jeans.

I kicked my leg hard and the little fucker
went flying. The pain in my ankle was intense and immediate. The
poison quickly took effect, perhaps because I was depleted
emotionally and physically. I fell to my knees. My eyes blurred. I
was losing consciousness. I could hear a lot of noise nearby. More
snakes? More birds? More vampires? I didn’t know or care.

Still, someone was close by. Someone or
something. As strange colors flitted just behind my eyelids,
perhaps an effect of the poison, I felt something bite deeply into
my ankle, the same spot where the snake had just sunk its own
fangs. Another snake? No. I could feel hands gripping my leg.

I closed my eyes. The pain in my ankle was
excruciating. The person sucking the venom did so with ferocity. I
forced open my eyes, and through the swirling colors and light, I
saw Yari.

“Yari?” I gasped, convinced I was
hallucinating.

“Shh. Quiet, Josiah. We’ve got to get you
out of here.”

I looked at Yari, and she started
transitioning in the way Atticai and the others had done. But Yari
didn’t transition into a raven. Yari transitioned into…Daphne, my
faithful hawk friend. Yari was Daphne?

It was then that I passed out.

Chapter Twenty-two

I opened my eyes, and I found myself in my
bed.

Was everything a dream? I looked down at my
ankle, and there were two sets of raw, swollen puncture wounds. The
snake and Yari?

Not a dream, I thought. Last night was
real.

So then how I was home?

I got up and went to the living room. It
felt like morning, yet, my house was still completely dark. I soon
saw why. Someone had duct-taped the blinds so that no light could
get in.

A voice spoke from the darkness, startling
me. “In about three hours, I can go outside.” Yari was sitting on
the carpet cross-legged in the far corner of the living room. She
looked as if she had been doing yoga in complete darkness. If not
for her pale complexion, I probably wouldn’t have seen her at
all.

“So, it’s all true,” I said, rubbing a hand
over my face. “Vampires, sunlight, werewolves, full moons—all of
it.”

“It’s all true, Josiah.”

“I still can’t believe it.”

“Believe, Josiah. You have seen it with your
own eyes.”

I stared at Yari, sitting there in the
corner of my living room, in complete darkness, a beautiful woman I
had slept with just weeks earlier, a woman I had watched turn into
a fucking beautiful red-tailed hawk. I sat down and held my head. I
wasn’t suffering from overwhelming grief—although my heart ached
heavier than ever, knowing that Tommy would never set foot in here
again. I wasn’t running on adrenaline, and I certainly wasn’t high
or drunk. This was real, and there was no talking my way out of
this. Could I still be dreaming? Sure, maybe, but I doubted it.

This was real. Real.

I asked the only question that I could think
of at the moment: “Since when did vampires start turning into
birds? I thought it was supposed to be bats or fog or
something.”

“You mortals—and your writers, in
particular—were the ones who fabricated that nonsense. Hell, we
don’t even refer to ourselves as vampires. We are something
else.”

“Mani,” I said.

“Yes.” Yari stood up and walked over to me.
“Josiah, I have done a horrible thing.”

“What would that be, exactly?”

She paused, and then sat down on the couch.
She was being exceptionally quiet. I walked over and sat next to
her. “What is it?” I asked.

“Josiah, I saved you. The Triat won’t like
that. The Mani won’t like that, either. Especially Atticai.”

“Why is it so awful that I know? Lena knows,
and nothing seems to happen to her.”

“Lena is different.”

“How so?”

“There is so much about us that you don’t
understand. There is a history, and there are many things that have
been prophesied. I can’t go into that right now. When I am at full
strength, we need to get you out of here.”

“Where would I go, Yari?”

“Anywhere but here. Atticai knows where you
live, and I know him; he’ll get suspicious if there is no word
about a man dying in the wilderness. He will assume you
survived.”

“So, what am I supposed to do? Run? I’ve
never run from anything in my life.”

“Can the macho ego bullshit, Josiah. These
guys will kill you without a second thought. The Triat gives them
the right to do so. Please, we must leave. Soon.”

“And go where?”

“Far away.”

“Come with me.”

Yari stared at the floor for a moment before
looking up at me. “Josiah, I will always be with you.”

“No, don’t be with me as Daphne, the hawk. I
want you to be by my side as you...Yari. You. Whatever you are, I
want to be with you.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. “Look, do you
have an extra set of keys to Tommy’s car? It should still be parked
at the ranch from the other night. His keys must have fallen out
when he fought Atticai because he didn’t have them when I dropped
him...” her voice drifted off.

“When you dropped him off at the hospital,”
I said suddenly, as the realization hit me that it had been Yari
who tried to save my friend’s life. “Why would you do that if you
knew he was a Carni?”

She looked away. “Because I knew you cared
about him. I did it for you.”

This whole thing was almost too much for me
to handle. I sat down and cradled my head in my hands, thinking.
“You’re going to have to turn into Daphne and go get his Mustang
from the ranch. You are going to need to bring it back here. It’ll
be dark soon, so I guess you won’t have a problem, you know,
transitioning, or whatever you call it.”

Yari smiled and looked at me for a heartbeat
or two. She reached out and took my hand, and we sat like that
until the sun finally set. And when it did, she stood from the
couch and stepped away from me. “Do you have an extra set of keys,
Josiah?

“Yes, we both kept a set of each other’s
keys in our bedrooms just in case of an emergency. Can you carry
them as a hawk?”

“Oh, I can carry much bigger things than
keys, Josiah. I’ll need the keys to the Mustang. Now.”

I nodded and fetched the keys, and when I
returned, a beautiful red hawk was sitting on the arm of the couch.
She opened her talons, and I carefully hooked the key ring inside
the claws as they closed over the key ring. I opened the door, and
the hawk shot out of my apartment like a cannon shot.

“Be careful!” I yelled after her, wondering
what my neighbors were thinking. With any luck, no one saw the
hawk.

About a half hour later, Yari made her way
back in Tommy’s Mustang. During that time, I had packed a few
things. We jumped into the muscle car and headed straight for the
freeway. I kept looking up in the sky for ravens.

So far, the coast was clear.

We hit the 91 Freeway and eventually made
our way to the 5 Freeway. I wasn’t sure how far north I wanted to
drive, but Monterey seemed far enough. Monterey was a quaint beach
city about five hours north, and it seemed as if it would be the
last place anyone would think to look for me. If the Triat wanted
me dead, I think she or it—or whatever it was—would have done it by
now.

Then again, what the hell did I know?

Chapter Twenty-three

In Monterey, we stopped at a quaint bed and
breakfast. I got us a room that only had one small window. Before
the trip, I had packed the same duct tape that Yari had used to
tape my own curtains shut. Yari and I proceeded to tape shut the
curtain to this window, as well. We even duct-taped the blinds
themselves, so that no light whatsoever could peek through come
morning.

I was exhausted. In hindsight, I probably
should have had the vampire be the one to do the driving through
the entire night. Anyway, I got the room for three nights, so that
we could figure out our next move. Even though, it wasn’t
morning—in fact, morning was still a few hours away—Yari hit the
sheets hard, crashing immediately. Dead to the world, so to speak.
And for all I knew, she was.

I lit a couple of candles that I had brought
and then I sat on the leather-back chair that was directly in front
of the bed. Although Yari and I had been intimate previously at the
party in Victorville, I felt I needed an invitation before lying
next to her on this day.

So, I sat there and watched her sleep as the
sun moved across the sky, which I only knew was happening from my
wristwatch. I thought that I had read somewhere that vampires
didn’t sleep, that they died all over again, and then were reborn
come sundown. Well, say that to this softly snoring girl. She sure
as hell sounded asleep to me.

I was exhausted, but was too wired to sleep.
I didn’t want to put on the TV because the noise and light might
bother her. So instead, I just stared. I sat there and looked at
her in the candlelight. Her auburn hair flowed down her back like a
red waterfall. Her body was long and athletic. She looked like a
female superhero, something out of a comic book. And, like a
heroine, she had saved my life. I didn’t know why, but she seemed
always to be there for me.

I thought about everything, trying to wrap
my brain around this vampire business. Had Tommy seriously been a
werewolf all this time? The more I thought about it, the more it
was adding up. Tommy had come out of nowhere. He had no family. He
had an erratic temper that he seemed always to be trying to keep in
check. True, he had disappeared for a few days, and, no, I had
never seen any actual proof that he was in the Reserves. I just
took him for his word. Who wouldn’t?

In fact, oddly—or perhaps hysterically—he
even hated high-pitched noises.

My eyes were growing heavy, and I dozed off.
Sometime later, I felt a hand guiding me to the bed. I cracked my
eyes open and saw Yari pulling down the covers. She unbuckled my
belt and slid my pants off like a mother putting a son to bed.
Still wearing my boxers and T-shirt, she guided me into bed and
tucked me in. She was sweet and gentle and kind in every movement
she made. She slipped under the covers next to me, her body
surprisingly warm.

“Aren’t vampires supposed to be cold?” I
asked.

“I’m not a vampire,” she said patiently.

I nodded once. “You’re a Mani.”

“There’s a big difference.”

“Of course,” I said, and grinned.

I turned and faced her. “I don’t know what
to do. Where do I go from here?”

“Don’t think about it, Josiah. Not right
now. Tonight, just close your eyes.”

I could feel her breath on my face. I leaned
in and kissed her forehead. “Thank you for saving my life.”

Chapter Twenty-four

I slept for a long time. It felt like years.
I opened my eyes and saw that Yari had opened the single window
because it was now dark outside. The clock on the nightstand showed
8:42 p.m. Wow, I had slept for fifteen hours. I sat up. The
showerhead blasted the echoing tiles with water in the connecting
bathroom. Considering that I had been out for the past fifteen
hours, I needed to use the facilities.

Duty called. I eased open the bathroom door
and could see Yari’s silhouette through the steamy glass shower
door.

“Josiah, is that you?” Yari called out over
the water.

“Of course it is. Who else could it be?”